(Yes, as if I had published any post in the last three months, in the first place…)

If you’re looking for software development treatises or Apple nerdery, I’m afraid I haven’t been able to focus on writing on these matters recently. I do have posts in the pipeline, but I don’t know when I will manage to publish them.

Yes, I am safe and sound, thanks for your concerns. I don’t know what to say, other than what I already said in January, so allow me to just point you to that post. Oh, and “Fluctuat nec mergitur” is latin for “pounded against by waves, but not sunk” and is the city of Paris‘ motto.

To arms, I say! I just realized the enormous scandal that is the presence in Unicode of the emoji character TOKYO TOWER (U+1F5FC), which you should be able to see if you are equipped with a color set after the colon: 🗼. Scandal, I say, as this thing, which we never talk about at home whenever we talk about Tokyo, and for good reason, as it is in truth a pale imitation of our national tower, the Eiffel tower, that the Japanese made at a time when they found success in imitation… Where was I? Oh, yes, so, that thing managed to steal a spot in Unicode even though our Eiffel tower isn’t in there! Scandal, I say!

Today, in France, freedom of expression was attacked. For through their odious act today, the perpetrators did not merely target Charlie Hebdo. They targeted Siné Hebdo. They targeted Le Canard Enchaîné. They targeted Le Monde. They targeted TF1. They targeted RTL. They targeted Maitre Eolas. They targeted Cyprien. They targeted the press, the radio, the television, the blogs and all of Internet. They targeted the whole of the media, the freedom of expression of us all and through it, our Republic.

And we will not back down.

This evening, I am on the place de la République, because as a Frenchman, as a blogger, as a person, I benefit from freedom of expression and I will stand by it. And even if I did not, in fact, buy or read Charlie Hebdo, today #JeSuisCharlie, and this site is blacked out.

And we also will not take any shortcut. Today our enemy is not Islam, or Muslims, or Arabs, or any religious, ethnic, national or other group. Today our enemy is terrorism.

We will not “remember” Charlie Hebdo, because rest assured that Charlie Hebdo will live. But we will remember Cabu, Charb, Wolinsky, Bernard Maris, and the others I am less familiar with (sorry) or who were not mentioned on the radio. Today my deepest condolences go to their families.

This post, I’m afraid, will only be of interest to my European Union readers. If you are not a E.U. citizen, sorry, and thanks for visiting.

Fellow Europeans, it is very important for you to go and vote in the coming European elections. Indeed, the European parliament in Strasbourg is the only democratically elected European institution, and it is important in this specific opportunity to make our voice and our vote heard.

It is important because, following the 2008 financial crisis, the Union had to take a more important role in order to help the countries most affected by the crisis, and this revealed the need for a more transparent and more democratic E.U. decision process.

It is important because we now realize that a common market will end up implying common food and product safety services, among others: when the next food safety crisis occurs, it will make no sense to have state-specific reactions for products that circulate in the whole of the Union.

It is important because subjects that matter a lot in technology, such as privacy, net neutrality, or competition regulation, are by necessity increasingly decided at the E.U. level, when they aren’t already.

It is important because, in contrast with the common market, we still have made little to no progress on common social protections and labor laws, and the contrast between these two situations is more and more noticeable, hampering development of a common personal services market.

It is important so that, as the geopolitical situation evolves, we can have a credible E.U. foreign affairs department that can claim to represent the European people.

But most importantly, it is important for as many of you as possible to cast your vote, in order to make the parliament’s legitimacy indisputable so as to give it real decision power over E.U. affairs, rather than have our fates decided by less democratic, parochially charged negotiations between the head of states. So for these reasons, and many others, go vote for your European parliament representatives in the next few days1.

And be wary of these sovereignty parties who promise you a better tomorrow but in fact only offer at best unconstructive criticism of the unification process, and do not detail how they could possibly manage either (depending on the situation) getting out of the Euro, or out of the Schengen zone, or out of any other E.U. commitment, as their cure could very well be worse than any disease.

In fact, while I vote this Sunday, May the 25th 2014 in France, I learned today that some countries, including the United Kingdom, are voting today already, which is another thing we may need to agree on: how can we have a pan-European election campaign if not every country votes at the same time?↩